Volume 66 is out, featuring selected casual matches from last weekend’s Sekai Saikyou Ketteisen event!  The theme of this video seems to be Kansai vs Kanto, with Kansai GG players Kabegiwa no DC, Ruu, Woshige, and Samitto playing against the Mikado regulars.

Volume 66
Ain(Ky) vs Kabegiwa no DC(Johnny)
Ruu(Bridget) vs Nage(Faust)
Mugen(Bridget) vs Samitto(Chipp)
Ruu(Bridget) vs Nage(Faust)
Woshige(Millia) vs Roi(Sol)

Last weekend was pretty amazing, as the aforementioned Sekai Saikyou Ketteisen was happening all throughout! I feel like I should write a mini report here even though I wasn’t at the event in person, since I spent all of last weekend stream monstering it! First off, you might notice that the name was changed from Kanto Saikyou Ketteisen to Sekai blah blah blah(basically from “Best in Tokyo” to “Best in the WORLD”). Whether the title change was appropriate is up to you, but this event was able to get a lot of Japan’s best GG players together. It also apparently brought back a lot of the oldschool players like Koichi, Karun and BLEED, though I suspect it’s because Cho Tougeki was happening that same weekend nearby. Koichi and BLEED both play Elizabeth in Persona 4 Arena incidentally.

Back to Sekai Saikyou Ketteisen, Day 1 was definitely the most packed, as it had a grand total of 3 events! 1st event was the “Rookie’s” tournament, and I put rookies in quotes because many of the entrants were people who have been playing the game for years on end! I’m guessing rookie could also mean someone who doesn’t think he/she is very good at the game or something. Anywho, Batako Zappa won the tournament handily.

Next was the singles tournament, which was much more interesting. The Kansai players swept this tournament, with Woshige Millia taking 1st and Makkii Dizzy taking 2nd. Grand finals was also a set of matches, rather than just one. To be honest, I’m not really a big fan of Makkii’s Dizzy, as he does a lot of the “wrong” setups and his execution isn’t on the same level as Kazuki and Ruki’s. But his game sense is so good that he can still dominate.

After singles was the main event, the 23on23! Usually, the teams are determined based on region, but there probably weren’t enough Kansai players present for this event to build a Kansai team. So what they did was have the players chosen by votes! Throughout most of the March and the 1st half of April, the Sekai Saikyou Ketteisen homepage had a poll that allowed people to vote for the players they liked the most for each character. Only the top 2 players by vote of each character were allowed to play in the 23on23, and then FAB and Woshige were appointed as team captains. Now, before this event went down, I was under the assumption that FAB and Woshige would then choose which players they wanted one by one, like team captains picking out their teammates in basketball. But this wasn’t the case at all: instead, FAB just got the players who got the most votes, and Woshige got the players with the 2nd most votes. FAB’s team ended up being a bit more stacked, so I’m not at all surprised that his team won the 23on23. There were still a lot of amazing matches, though.

That’s it for day one. Main event of day 2 was a 3on3 tournament, which also had a good number of upsets and some surprising entrants. American players Elvenshadow and Chaz ended up teaming, along with Hiro Anji, though they were knocked out first round by a Slayer player. mike, BLEED, and Koichi also teamed up and in a big upset they beat a team of Woshige, Dogura, and Hama for their 1st match! It’s obvious that BLEED hadn’t played seriously in a long time, as this was the sloppiest he has ever performed, but he was able to take out Hama and Dogura. Woshige then beat him, but lost to Koichi soon after due to a very unfortunate failed burst punish. He baited out Koichi’s burst perfectly in round 3, but messed up the punish somehow. Koichi eventually got momentum and did a very slick meaty VCL FRC setup into instant j.k overhead for the win. Dogura is another player whom I haven’t seen in videos for a while, and that weekend gave me the reason why! Apparently he’s been busy being amazing in Street Fighter IV, as he got 2nd place with Bison/Dictator in the Cho Tougeki AE tournament that same weekend. I don’t think the Cho Tougeki AE footage is out yet, but you can see some great matches that Dogura had with Inoue aka Kazunoko on Godsgarden:


Anywho, the winner of the 3on3 was Haaken Potemkin, En Slayer, and Satou Johnny.

Last event of day 2 was a series of exhibition FT3 matches. Inoue stopped by during the 3on3, and after it was done, the stream chat started suggesting certain players to play each other, so Inoue picked out some of them. The matches, and results were:
FAB(Potemkin) vs Ruu(Bridget) 2-3
Makkii(Dizzy) vs Machaboo(Testament) 1-3
Dogura(Robo) vs GAKU(Robo) 3-0
Roi(Sol) vs Woshige(Millia) 3-0
Chonari(Zappa) vs En(Slayer) 0-3
2rio(I-No) vs Kedako(May) 3-2
Mugen(Bridget) vs Samitto(Chipp) 3-2*
Chonari(Zappa) vs Nage(Faust) 3-1
Kabegiwa no DC(Johnny) vs Godolphin(May) 3-2*
*These sets of matches got cut off on the stream, so I wasn’t able to watch them in their entirety.

2rio vs Kedako is easily one of the greatest match sets I’ve ever seen, so I hope that Jonio recorded these exhibitions on the DVDR. If not, I did take the time to restream these matches, so I could upload those in the future.

Day 3 was the last one, and it was also on a Monday so not everyone from the previous two days could make it. But it was still pretty amazing, as they held a very unique 5on5 tournament. Basically, the tournament started out as a 1on1, and once someone won 2 matches, then among the two people that were defeated, the winner could recruit one of them into his/her team. So it becomes a 2on2. Then, in the next round, a team of 2 who defeats another team of 2 gets to recruit one of the defeated members into their team, increasing the size to 3. And this was repeated until they had a few teams of 5, who all played against each other to determine the winner. It’s a pretty interesting format, because even though it’s single elimination, there’s a possibility that you can stay in the tournament if you lose because your opponent might end up recruiting you into his team. Woshige’s team ended up winning this event.

So that was the only event scheduled for day 3, but there were also a ton of exhibition matches right after which were similarly amazing. Again, I hope Jonio recorded these, but if not I did restream these matches so I can put it up later if he didn’t save.

And that’s basically it for Sekai Saikyou Ketteisen: a weekend full of nothing but Guilty Gear! I was totally supposed to be studying that weekend but I spent all my time stream monstering instead. Would totally do it again in a heart beat though.